


Fall Apart If You Must, But Fall Apart With Me

by clotpolesonly



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Danny Mahealani Doesn't Know, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Gen, Hair Dyeing, Jackson Needs a Hug, Missing Scene, Post-Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-14
Updated: 2019-08-14
Packaged: 2020-08-23 04:50:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20237017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clotpolesonly/pseuds/clotpolesonly
Summary: Jackson [10:47pm]:come overJackson [10:49pm]:nevermindDanny lets his phone fall onto the bed and digs the heels of his palms into his eyes. With a heartfelt sigh, he snatches it back up and heads for the door because, while the first text is aggravating beyond belief after weeks of silence, this one is downright alarming.He’s not sure what he was expecting to find when he gets to Jackson's house, but an open box of hair dye next to the sink and half of Jackson’s head smeared blue is not it.





	Fall Apart If You Must, But Fall Apart With Me

**Author's Note:**

> i came across a graphic on facebook that said _"in this house we help our friends dye their hair at 10pm because they're having a mental breakdown and can't reach the back of their head"_, and my first thought prooobably shouldn't have been Jackson, but it was and here we are

**Jackson [10:47pm]: ** ** _come over_ **

Danny stares at the text. He almost pinched himself when the notification popped up. After all, it's been _ weeks _ since the last time Jackson texted him. _ He _ had texted _ Jackson _ plenty of times—first to hang out, then to find out what the hell was going on with him, finally just to see if he was okay—but Jackson hadn’t responded to a single one of them since before he’d even broken up with Lydia.

If he even _ stayed _ broken up with Lydia. In the last week of school, the two of them suddenly seemed pretty chummy again, so maybe they’re back together. Danny doesn’t know because neither of them bothered to so much as text him an update.

And now this? He messages Danny in the middle of the fucking night and expects him to just obey? Danny is gearing up to write out a nice and thorough _ “fuck off’ _ when the three little dots pop up to indicate that Jackson is typing again. 

**Jackson [10:49pm]: ** ** _nevermind_ **

Danny lets his phone fall onto the bed and digs the heels of his palms into his eyes. With a heartfelt sigh, he snatches it back up and heads for the door because, while the first text was aggravating beyond belief, this one is downright alarming.

The only time he’s ever seen Jackson ask for company and then change his mind that fast was on his fifteenth birthday. Later that night, he got a call from Jackson’s mom asking if he’d seen him. He hadn’t. Danny eventually found him on the lacrosse field, falling down drunk on gin he’d stolen from his dad’s liquor cabinet. It was not a pretty sight.

If this is anything like that, Danny can’t ignore it, no matter how pissed he is that his best friend went off the rails and ghosted him for two fucking months.

He checks his phone eight times in the six minutes it takes to get from his house to Jackson’s, but there are no new texts. Two months ago, he wouldn’t have been worried by that. But two months ago, Jackson hadn’t dumped his longtime girlfriend in a public spectacle, ignored Danny’s phone calls repeatedly, nearly torpedoed his sports career over some petty jealousy, and literally attempted suicide in the middle of a lacrosse game. 

Danny hasn’t _ stopped _being worried in a long time.

Jackson’s Porsche is the only car in the driveway when Danny pulls in, but that’s not unusual. Chances are, Mr. Whittemore is working late at the office on one case or another and Mrs. Whittemore is away on business.

Danny parks in the garage, since it's open. The front door is too, when he tries it.

“Jackson?”

A clunk and faint cursing answers him. Danny follows the sound of it up the stairs and down the hall to the bathroom across from Jackson’s bedroom.

He’s not sure what he was expecting—maybe drunkenness and hostility, like last time?—but an open box of hair dye next to the sink and half of Jackson’s head smeared blue was not it. There’s a splatter of blue on the tile floor too, and Jackson has a white towel in hand, rubbing it around and making it worse.

“Uh, Jackson?” Danny says again, even more concerned than the last time. “What the hell is this?”

Jackson looks up suddenly, almost like he’s startled even though he had to know that Danny was there. There’s a second where they just stare at each other, face to face for the first time in _ weeks, _ and then Jackson’s eyes drop back to the floor.

“You’re not supposed to be here.” He gives the stained tile one more useless scrub before balling the ruined towel up in his fist. “I told you not to come.”

“And since when do I do what you tell me to?”

Jackson’s grip on the towel goes white-knuckled. “You’re supposed to.” He pushes himself to his feet and turns to the sink, head still down, shoving the towel in and turning on the water. “I’m the captain, remember?”

“We’re not on the field,” Danny says. “Jackson, what are you even doing?”

“Whatever the hell I want!” Jackson snatches up the bottle and squirts more dye onto his head, heedless of the droplets that splatter down onto his neck. “If I want to dye my hair, I can dye my fucking hair and nobody can stop me.”

Danny throws out his arms. “I’m not trying to stop you!”

“Then why are you here?”

“Why the fuck do you think, Jackson?” Danny snaps. “Because you texted me for the first time in forever. Because you nearly _ died _and I didn’t even get to see you after. Because—because you obviously don’t know what the fuck you’re doing with that and you’re making a goddamn mess of yourself. Give that here.”

Danny only gets the bottle away because Jackson’s too surprised to stop him. He’s lost plenty of tug-of-wars over the years to know that Jackson always plays dirty, and he knows all of Danny’s pressure points. He half expects Jackson to lash out now, go for the knees or that spot just under his sternum that’s extra sensitive from his surgery, but he doesn’t. He just stares at his suddenly empty, blue-stained hand like he doesn’t know what to do with it.

Danny’s never seen that particular look on Jackson’s face. In their nine years of friendship, Danny’s seen Jackson with a lot of looks, not all of them pretty, but he’s never seen him _ lost_.

Jackson startles when Danny takes him by the shoulder, head whipping around like he’s searching for an incoming missile. Danny almost lets go, but then the tension in the muscle under his fingers releases all at once. Jackson allows Danny to steer him toward the closed toilet and sit him down. He only resists for a second before leaning his head back at Danny’s urging, eyes closed and exposed throat working around a swallow.

Resigning himself to blue hands, Danny starts dragging the tip of the bottle across the parts of Jackson’s scalp that are still clean, following along each line with his fingers to work the dye in evenly.

After a long moment, he asks, “Why blue?”

He lays down three more lines before Jackson answers.

“First box I saw.”

Danny puts a finger over the bottle tip and gives it a good shake. He nudges Jackson’s head forward and keeps working. “Why dye it at all?”

The silence is even longer this time. Danny’s almost given up hope when Jackson shrugs, jerky and uncertain.

“It’s just what people do. At least, according to Lydia.” There’s a hitch of hesitation before the name, but he pushes past like if he doesn’t acknowledge it then Danny won’t notice. “Girls fuck with their hair after bad things happen. Like that Eliza chick last year. Went through a bunch of shit, was out of school for a week, came back with her hair bright pink.”

Danny quirks a skeptical eyebrow, not like Jackson can see it. “And Eliza’s a role model?”

Jackson shrugs again, his shoulder nudging up against Danny’s stomach. “Figured if it worked for her, it would work for me.”

Work for _ what, _ Danny wants to ask, but he’s not sure he needs to. He’s not sure Jackson would know what to say anyway. Instead, he tilts Jackson’s head the other way to keep working and says, “So...you and Lydia.”

Jackson makes a choked off noise, maybe the start of a word bitten off before it could form. His head twitches under Danny’s hands like he might pull away, push Danny off and send him home, shut down again as tightly as he can. But he’s only curling in on himself, head bowed and shoulders hunched.

“No,” he says. “It’s...it’s complicated.”

“Complicated,” Danny echoes. “But still no.”

“Yeah.”

“Do the complications have anything to do with the way you’ve been acting lately?”

Jackson is quiet. Chewing on his tongue, Danny squeezes out the last of the dye and leans around to toss the bottle in the trash can.

“Don’t let it set too long if you don’t want it to damage your hair.”

He’s halfway out the door when Jackson says his name. It’s quiet, quieter than Danny has ever known Jackson to be, and he hesitates in spite of himself. But Jackson doesn’t say anything else. Just like he’s spent _ months _ not saying anything, even about the things he’s _ always _ been willing to talk to his best friend about. Even when things got so bad in ways that Danny doesn’t even know that he tried to stab himself in front of a hundred of people.

“Look, man,” Danny says, throat tight. “You don’t have to tell me everything. And I guess, really—” He can’t bring himself to turn back around. His dye-wet hands hover in the air with nowhere to land and he laughs bleakly. “Really, you don’t have to tell me _ anything, _ which you seem to have figured out on your own. But if all you want is to—”

“My parents want us to move.”

Danny turns back. “What?”

Jackson looks ridiculous with his hair all slicked up, color smeared in awkward splotches around his hairline, but what Danny can see of his face from this angle is pale and miserable. His teeth clench, a muscle jumping in his jaw, and he’s rubbing at the blue stains on his hands like that will be enough to wipe them clean again.

“Dad found a firm willing to take him in London,” he says. “Mom doesn’t have anything lined up yet, but she wants us to go anyway.”

Danny collapses against the door jamb. “Why? Because of all the—?” He doesn’t have any specifics, so he just waves a hand.

Jackson nods anyway. “They think it’ll be good for me.”

The sneer in his voice says he disagrees, but with the events of the last few months, Danny has to wonder. “Maybe it will be.”

The wide-eyed, betrayed look Jackson sends his way immediately makes him want to take it back. But he grits his teeth and lets the words stand because whatever’s been going on, it’s gone too far.

Jackson shakes his head. “No. No, I can’t leave.”

“Well, you can’t keep going like this.” Danny gestures to the mess sitting in front of him now. Jackson’s cheeks flush and he looks away again, but at least he doesn’t try to disagree. Danny lets his hand fall again and says, “I don’t know what the hell’s happened to you lately, Jackson, but—”

“Nothing that leaving would do anything to fix.”

“And how do you know that?” Danny demands. “Really, Jackson, how? You’re here, you spiral. Remove you from that environment, maybe you _ don’t _spiral. From where I’m sitting, that seems like a pretty solid theory.”

Jackson shakes his head again, harder. His fingers dig into his thighs, pressing blue imprints into his sweatpants. “You don’t understand,” he bites out. “You don’t know anything about—”

“Then _ tell me! _ For god’s sake, Jackson, just—”

Danny cuts himself off because, damn it, he has more pride than this. He’s not going to beg for his best friend to talk to him. He pushes off the door frame, one foot already out the door.

“No, Danny, _ wait, _ I—”

Blue fingers find Danny’s wrist and he would be mad about the mark they're going to leave if Jackson’s eyes weren’t red and wet and pleading. His mouth opens and then closes again. Jackson's lip trembles and he clenches his jaw tight to fight it back.

“I want to tell you,” he says finally. “I want to tell you everything, really, I do, but—but I can’t.”

His voice breaks, and it takes all of Danny’s resolve to leave with it. “Why not?”

“I just—” Even though Danny isn’t fighting him, Jackson tightens his hold. “I can’t. Not right now, not yet. Maybe—”

He’s struggling so hard to get the words out that Danny can’t hold onto the last vestiges of his resentment. Jackson makes a noise of distress when Danny pulls away, but Danny just drops down onto the lip of the bathtub across from him and he quiets again.

He stays that way for a long time, and Danny does too, the two of them just sitting together in silence. It’s not exactly comfortable, but it’s not the worst hangout Danny’s ever suffered through either, and it’s a hell of a lot better than sitting home alone, staring at his phone and wondering if his best friend is really dead or not.

A few times, Jackson shifts, mouth opening, but every time he lets out a heavy breath and looks away again. Danny can’t blame him; he’s run out of things to say too.

Eventually, Danny glances at his watch. “You should wash your hair,” he says. “Before it starts falling out.”

The look of alarm on Jackson’s face is enough to wring a weak chuckle out of him. Deflating, Jackson huffs and kicks him in the shin.

In a bathroom this small, he has to squeeze past Danny’s knees to get to the sink and the towel he tosses over his shoulder hits Danny squarely in the chest. On a normal day, Danny would have beaned him in the back of the head with it or stuffed it down the back of his pants, but he holds onto it now. There’s a few holes in it, a row of ragged punctures, and Danny picks at the threads as the water starts to run.

Jackson doesn’t dunk his head in just yet. Instead, he braces himself on the edge of the sink and meets Danny’s gaze through the mirror. His eyes are tired as he asks, “Why are you here?”

Danny shakes his head, but he doesn’t have to cast around for an answer this time. Not when the question is genuine. “Because I’m your _ friend, _ you jackass.”

Jackson’s fingers tighten their grip on the porcelain, even as the ghost of a smile tugs at the corner of his mouth at the familiar insult. “Still?”

“Yeah,” Danny says. “Still.”

After a long moment, Jackson nods, and it feels a little bit like that fifteenth birthday when he ran away from his parents but offered Danny the gin bottle to share. Danny musters up a real smile this time; for all that that night was pretty terrible in a lot of ways, the one highlight was that Jackson didn’t run from _ him. _

Maybe this means he's ready to stop running now too.

Peering at himself in the mirror, Jackson purses his lips. “I’m gonna regret doing this in the morning, aren’t I?”

“Oh yeah,” Danny says readily. “Absolutely. You’re gonna look ridiculous. But you’ll look the slightest bit _ less _ ridiculous because you let me help.”

Jackson actually laughs, and the tight knot that’s been lodged in Danny’s gut loosens for the first time in weeks. Just a bit—it’ll take a hell of a lot more than one stilted evening to convince him that Jackson’s okay, that _ they’re _ okay—but it’s something. It’s progress.

He can’t help but snicker at the awkward way Jackson has to contort himself to get his head under the sink faucet, and when Jackson flips him off over his shoulder with a bubbly, blue-smeared hand, Danny finally feels like he might have his best friend back.

**Author's Note:**

> [rebloggable on tumblr!](https://clotpolesonly.tumblr.com/post/186992063956/fall-apart-if-you-must-but-fall-apart-with-me)


End file.
